True unbelievers Events of Sept. 11 have atheists "coming out' to face an unaccepting society

SF Chronicle ^ | 3-10-02 | Sam McManis

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Way in the back of an ornate and dimly lit German restaurant in San Francisco, partitioned off from other Saturday night diners, sits a group packed in two long rows of tables. Chewing bratwurst and the fat, they are as old as 80 and as young as 22. They are black, white, Asian, hailing from as far away as Zimbabwe and Australia or as close as Daly City. Some know each other; some are strangers. All seek support and comfort from those who understand.

[watchin]

"Look, you're wanting to paint me with the moral-relativist brush"

Certainly. And pointing out, at the same time, that any other view is inconsistent for the atheist.

I'm not trying to pick a fight. I'm just pointing out the reality. As soon as you claim that we just made up morality, you essentially admit to being a moral relativist.

If we just made up the rules out of thin air, then there really is no such thing as a criminal. Nothing is really wrong, but only contrary to the opinion of the majority, who imposes its morality on the minority.

So you can call those who find rape honorable "criminals", but your definition of a criminal is simply someone who disagrees with you. If his side was the majority, you'd be a "criminal" for avoiding rape.

[Salman]

The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new -- the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.

Wishful thinking on his part.

There is a definite anti-Christian bias in the schools. But the alternative is some kind of "New Age" fuzziness, not some thought out philosphy such as humanism.

All the same to a Christian being bashed, but far from the same to a humanist.

[McGavin999]

Oh please! I'm getting sick of every group with every imaginable difference getting together and claiming to be an abused minority. Get over it. If you don't believe in religion then why are you discussing it with people?

[lawdog]

'Our problem is that we've never asked others to consider our feelings the way we do theirs,"

Hard to believe considering all the shrill lawsuits you yahoos file!

[tortoise]

Athiests[sic] persecuted? What a laugh! Especially in the Bay Area; it's a badge of honor.

I have immense difficulty viewing atheists as being "persecuted" in the Bay Area, and most of the atheists I know in the Bay Area (and there ARE loads of them here) are not the whining losers portrayed in the article. In fact, most of the Bay Area atheists I know are pretty conservative as a group in the strictly Constitutionalist sense. I would say that "atheist constitutionalist" describes a non-trivial percentage of the Silicon Valley engineering and executive professionals (with "non-trivial percentage" unfortunately being much smaller than the avalanche of sandal-wearing grass-eaters in the area).

I'm just going to guess that there is also a type of left-wing atheist that I just don't run into very often (by choice). They make all the conservative atheists look bad.

[Conservative til I die]

Quit yer bitchin' Nancy boy.